66 Days
by 96 Hubbles
Summary: Should I tell you, or leave the suspense as intact as possible? I'll tell you this much: De-aging fic, but fair warning, this will NOT be what you're expecting.


_Disclaimer: I do not own "Criminal Minds", nor am I making money for this. My work is not intended to reflect upon the original._

 **66 Days**

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 _ **Prologue**_

 **June 23, 2043**

A knock sounded and the man who had once turned down a Nobel Peace Prize looked out to see an instantly recognizable face standing on his doorstep.

"Doctor Matthew Greenwood?" the man on the doorstep asked. He was thirty-seven - would be thirty-eight later this year, the other man knew - and had his mother's hair but his father's perpetually unreadable expression.

"Yes?"

The younger man held up a badge. "SSA Jack Hotchner."

Dr. Greenwood raised an eyebrow. "And how can I help you today, SSA Hotchner?"

Jack Hotchner sighed. "Do we really have to do it this way, Uncle Spence?"

 _-x-_

"Why here?" Jack Hotchner asked after Greenwood (the older man had insisted on continuing to use the name, citing 'reasons of my own') refused to talk to him until they reached a specific place in a nearby park.

"Habit of caution."

"If you're talking about listening devices, you do realize technology has advanced quite a bit in the last few decades? Even back when you disappeared there were parabolas that could easily detect - "

"You don't really want a lecture on mineralogy and sound-blocking, do you?" Greenwood interrupted wearily, gesturing at the short, rocky cliffs surrounding them in their little secluded sunny spot by the stream. When Jack Hotchner shrugged, conceding Greenwood's point, the older man examined him closely. "Hmmm, no accusations of paranoia or over-reaction. Either you trust my word, or you're humoring me. Which is it?"

"Trust," Hotchner replied with no hesitation.

"How interesting! I actually think you're telling the truth."

"Is that so uncommon?"

"Only for people who knew me then."

Jack wore one of those Hotchner near-smiles. "If you're talking about the team, I have an advantage they don't."

"Which is?"

"Belief in my father when he said you were right."

"Ah."

Greenwood felt the younger man bristle. "That's it? _'Ah'_?" Jack asked. "Dad believed in you! He stuck by you! You _do_ know everybody else accused you of breaking up the team, don't you?"

"What would you like me to say, Jack?" Matthew Greenwood asked gently. "No, I didn't know. I didn't even know the team _had_ broken up until you said as much. But whether or not they did, you can't put that on me. I did what I had to do, and how the rest of them reacted to it was their choice, not mine."

Very few people would have been able to spot Jack Hotchner's look of resignation and defeat, but Greenwood had spent a decade reading the man's father, to which his son's expressions were a virtual mirror. "I'm sorry," Hotchner said, honestly remorseful. "You're right, of course. I'm sorry I snapped. It's just that I lost Dad a few months ago and... I don't know... Everything concerning him is still raw, I guess."

Something clenched in Spencer Reid's chest and for the first time in twenty-eight years he let himself forget the cardinal rule of living undercover: _never break character._ You weren't even supposed to _think_ using your own identity, but for a moment, Spencer Reid returned and let the false persona drift away. Not far - 'Matthew Greenwood' remained nearby, floating somewhere just above him like a balloon tied to a toddler's wrist - but the sudden resurgence of his true self after so very, very long left him shaken and disorientated. "I'm sorry to hear that," Reid said at last, in a sense speaking for the first time in nearly three decades. "Was it... I mean...well, _how_?"

"A short illness. Not too painful, thankfully, but unexpected."

"Aaron was an extremely good man, quite possibly the best I ever knew. Losing him must have been very hard on you, Jack."

"It was."

They were silent for some time, until Jack finally got around to asking the question he had come for: "Uncle Spencer, what happened to Uncle Dave?"

"How much do you know?"

"I know that the night the two of you disappeared, you delivered a file to our house containing medical lab reports and details of experiments to be performed on an unknown test subject."

"I should have caught on sooner considering they never wrote 'human'," Reid muttered softly to himself.

"Excuse me?"

"They never wrote 'human'. They knew a human trial without preliminary experiments on animals would never be published."

"Human trials? Jesus, you mean Uncle Dave was - "

"Never mind, Jack," Reid said, sharply cutting the other man off. "Tell me what else you know."

"Nothing definite. Dad told me years later that you had also left a request asking him to take copies of that file to a geneticist who used to work with..."

"You can say it. Maeve. She worked with Maeve Donovan."

"Yes. Anyway, Dad said your letter asked him to take them to this Doctor Thompson for analysis, though he never specified what exactly it was that you wanted analyzed."

A thousand scenarios ran through the older man's head and, the change unseen, but when he rose from the bench he was once again Matthew Greenwood. "Then I suggest, Agent Hotchner, as what you know is little enough, you forget it and simply walk away."

Jack got to his feet and raised his voice to talk to the already retreating figure. "I can't do that, Spencer, because I know one more thing: that, no matter if it was your fault or not, your leaving isolated my father from his team. Oh yes, when he retired less than a year later, he claimed it was because Grandpa Roy's Alzheimer's was progressing and he no longer felt right about putting the extra work of taking care of me on Aunt Jessica, but I knew the real reason even then. The real reason had to do with _you_. You and Uncle Dave."

Greenwood turned and walked up to the FBI agent. "I have nothing to tell you, Jack. I have no idea where Dave is, or even if he's still alive," he said when they were practically nose to nose. "But if he _is_ still alive, then the only way to keep him safe is to stay as far away from him as possible. That's why I haven't had any contact with him for twenty-eight years. It's why I haven't even looked for him. And I am not about to risk everything after all this time simply because you cannot accept a perfectly logical reason for your father's retirement."

"You know, you didn't use to be like this," Jack stated.

But he had underestimated his quarry. With a gracious smile and short, "Good day, Agent Hotchner," Matthew Greenwood turned and walked away, carrying the ghost of young man named Spencer Reid with him.

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 _So by now you've probably guessed that there will be little fluff in this fic. (That's literally true - I plan for there to be a least A LITTLE fluff, but we'll see how it goes.) I think it's also the first time Dave has been the main, as well as one and only, victim of the ubiquitous de-aging elves, so hopefully it will be interesting to watch how that plays out._

 _And don't worry, I am still working on "The Formation of Planets". I apologize for the long wait, however I don't know when the next chapter will be posted._


End file.
